Swan Song, Round Deux

...and we're back.

So my problem with this compilation is that most Christian music isn't really that good. J-Knapps aside, there's not much that's up to par unless one really digs songs that might be about the cat, might be about some unrequited fundamentalist love, might be about J.C. the First. Case in point: Delirious?'s "I Could Sing of Your Love Forever":

I could sing of your love forever (cat)
I could sing of your love forever (unrequited fundamentalist love)
I could sing of Your love forever (J.C. Numero Uno)

I blame Amy Grant for this confusion -- wasn't she the first crossover Christian artist? Or was it Michael W. Smith's popular "Friends," currently holding steady between Vitamin C's "Graduation Day" and Natalie Merchant's "These Are the Days" on the VH1: Cheesy Graduation Songs Special, that began this grammatical atrocity? Also, does Delirious? really need a question mark after their name? What does that mean? And should I start signing my emails as Query? Nine? BC Law '07?

Anyway, despite the fact that Delirious?'s lead singer abuses grammar, has a Spanish accent that's just awful, and clearly wants to be Bono, my new funeral list is in, and one of their songs is on it (So is "Beast of Burden," but I highly doubt that one will make it past the censors.):

Do you feel the darkness tremble
when all the saints join in one song
and all the streams flow as one river
to wash away our brokenness --

Open up the doors and let the music play
let the streets resound with singing
songs that bring your hope and
songs that bring your joy
dancers who dance upon injustice.

Granted, this isn' t writing to die for. (And in a post about grammar, I have to mention that the past sentence should really be, "Granted, this isn't writing for which to die." But whatever. The stick's not made it up THAT far just yet.) I'm also wondering what dancing upon injustice really looks like. I hope it involves some rump-shakin' and hootenannyifyin' and generally putting injustice back in its plizzace, because girl, I do so love a good shimmyshashashake.

I still love this song. I'm not much of a charismatic, hands-in-the-air, wave-and-sway sort of girl, but for some reason the cadences in the second to last line of the verses and beginning of the chorus just make me feel incredibly warm and humble and grateful and ready to be anywhere, do anything, love anybody. In short, I get a silly grin on my face and feel -- quiet inside.

It's hard to understand faith--your own, let alone another person's. It might even be impossible to do so. As soon as you think you've got a grip on it, you realize how little you know, how what you say you believe fails to comport with the way you live your life, how at times it seems feckless and unoriginal and limited to believe in anything, ad infinitum. Believe me: I know. Faith's an unwieldy beast, nebulous and intractable at times, capable of being held in a myriad gods and goddesses, in Science, in Reason, in the non-existence of a life beyond this one, in Chance, in Change. But we all hold it in some form. In some thing. [Pause so Sheridan can take a bathroom break.]

I had a hard time biting my tongue a few days ago when a fellow student started to wax eloquent about Calvinism, not-so-gently mocked the Catholic church's "condition" at the time of the Reformation, and then proceeded to go on and on and on and on about predestination and the elect and blah blah blah exclude exclude exclude. I may know my I Corinthians 4 powers (Travis!), but in matters of theology, I know my limits -- I will not venture into those dark waters myself tonight. But it made me angry all the same. [FYI: It wasn't that he was talking about predestination. It was that there seemed to be a hint of pride in his voice as he talked about "God's infallibility in choosing the elect" -- as if God got us all on an assembly line and went "this one, yes...oh, she's lovely...NO, not that one...nope. Nope. Nope. Yes! No."]

That's not MY God, I wanted to say. I don't know why I didn't. I don't have faith in Quality Control on some cosmic assembly line. I have faith in a being whose love knows no bounds, who is beyond all that we can say or understand, who takes delight in interacting with humanity and working through women and men because we are limited, not in spite of it. I have faith in this being's transforming love and mystery, in the freedom I've gained from loving back and (slowly) learning to love out, in the slow but deliberate removal of guilt for what's behind and eradication of fear for what lies ahead. And I know many of you reading this are good to let me speak so freely of these things to you. This outburst must seem a little...strange. It just hurts to see my God, my faith, my identity tied up with something so wholly repressive when all I've experienced of it over the past year is, well, the opposite of all that. I imagine it's something similar to what some of my Catholic friends may feel when Ratzinger lays down his papal law in the near future: at the same time that you want to distance yourself from something, you feel fiercely protective of what you perceive to be its true beauty, its saving grace.

This brings me back to my funeral, the particulars of which are constantly under revision (evites forthcoming). I'm half-joking about the BeeGees (okay, I'm totally not joking about the BeeGees). But I do hope that people pay attention just a little bit, and I do hope that my caustic tongue and questionable antics don't amount to utter hypocrisy, and I do hope that y'all get your dance on, or your thanks on, or your smile on, or your yarmulke on, or your clothes on, or whatever when they get to the end of the first verse, because all of the welcome I've felt and the openness I've experienced in what I understand to be the very nature of God comes to a head at this crescendo:

Fling wide, you heavenly gates;
prepare the way of the risen Lord.

And if anyone so much as breathes predestination, turn right 'round, baby, and KNOCK that bastard* out.

*Sorry, J.C.